Meta Faces EU DSA Lawsuit Over Child Safety Breach 

Meta platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing a lawsuit by the European Union Commission for potentially breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) concerning child safety. 

The European DSA entered into effect last year, requiring big tech companies to take necessary measures to fight illegal and harmful content on their platforms. The European Commission has initiated a deep investigation against both of Meta social networking companies, Facebook and Instagram, with the belief the platforms are not making insufficient decision related to mitigating the risks that children may be facing on the platforms. 

The decision to launch such an investigation came following the submission of a risk assessment report by Meta September.  

According to an EU executive, the Commission is mainly concerned about children’s safety on the platforms because the algorithms that are employed by both Facebook and Instagram can lead to behavioral addictions in children and create a “rabbit-hole effects, thereby leading them to a more limited and extreme content. 

The regulator added that the EU has also more concerns regarding the effectiveness of Meta’s age-assurance and verification methods, highlighting the children can potentially access to inappropriate content because these verification processes may be inappropriate. 

In a response to these statements, a Meta spokesperson emphasized the company’s commitment to child safety stating, “We want young people to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online and have spent a decade developing more than 50 tools and policies designed to protect them”. 

The spokesperson also noted that Meta is in an ongoing challenge to ensure child safety online, expressing the company’s willingness to cooperate with the Commission on this matter. 

The investigation adds the social networking parent’s increasing regulatory challenges in the EU, including issues of election misinformation ahead of the European Parliament elections. In this regard, Meta violating the DSA can result in significant penalties, with fines reaching up to 6% of a company’s annual global turnover. 

The outcome of this investigation could have a significant impact on Meta and other tech companies that operate in the EU. Given that the EU focuses on scrutiny, the tech sector should be responsible for monitoring such platforms and adhere to regulations to avoid repercussions. 

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